Mobile devices face increasing bandwidth demands for each of its functions as well as an increase of the number of functions integrated into the system. This requires wide bandwidth, low-pin count (serial) and highly power-efficient (network) interfaces that provides sufficient flexibility to be attractive for multiple applications, but which can also be covered with one physical layer technology. The Mobile Industry Processor Interface Alliance (MIPI) defines several high-speed serial link standards.
MIPI's M-PHY (a physical layer technology that is developed for mobile platforms) offers two transmission modes: low speed and high speed, each supporting multiple speed gears, and will also support several power-save states: STALL for the high-speed mode, SLEEP for the low-speed mode, and HIBERN8. STALL and SLEEP are optimized for a quick wakeup in their respective transmission modes, whereas HIBERN8 is a very low-power mode, which has a longer wakeup time. M-PHY is also defined to support optical links.